Poem: Chips

More and faster computer chips, more and faster . . . and faster.

Chips

There in my paper, lost among the news
of stuff readers actually value, attracted
to a heightened surge of blood,
there’s an item announcing yet another chip,
newly minted and its internal capacity
dates this poem as surely as a time-capsule
One point six billion calculations in a second,
as if we could conceive of that

Architects speak of less as more and are proven right
by the structure of computer-chips
and it’s a legacy of the mind in either case
But the mind is a different thing than calculation
and we’re still Model T-ing with calculation
I’m not the first to wonder if we may outrun thought,
bound into a dictatorship of zeros and ones,
as if we could conceive of that

So there it is, tucked away in my paper,
among the more popular wars and scandals
Still, man’s an old hand at making war,
well taught in the art of scandal
and such an untested and naive calculator
Zeros and ones may answer before they’re asked,
these questions belonging to thoughtfulness,
as if we could conceive of that